Three weeks ago at the Cochise County courthouse in Arizona, clerks Bonnie Cook and Michelle Garcia made a fascinating discovery. While digging around a storage closet, the two noticed an old and yellowing envelope, stuffed into a corner. What they found inside will flesh out one of the most famous events in American history — the gunfight at the OK Corral.
Inside were 36 pages: firsthand accounts of the legendary shootout on Oct. 26, 1881, between the Earp brothers and a band of cattle rustlers. In movie-script fashion, one witness recalls the moments just before the gunfire broke out.
“Mr. Holliday was standing next to the buildings,” the witness is quoted as saying. “On the inside he had a gun under his coat. He had a long coat. The way I noticed the gun is that his coat would blow open, and he tried to keep it covered.”
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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And it gets better. Not only will the documents be preserved and made available to historians, but all 36 pages will be scanned and uploaded to the Internet, with the first images to appear within a week.
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